Temasek’s total deemed interest in Nanofilm Technologies International has increased from 5.93% to 6.04% following open market buying by a subsidiary entity.
On Aug 24, Venezio, the subsidiary, paid near $3.05 million for 764,100 shares, which works out to an average of $3.99 each.
This transaction took place around a week after SeaTown, a separate Temasek fund management entity on Aug 18 sold 450,000 Nanofilm shares at $4.3356, pocketing proceeds of $1.95 million.
Besides its 5.655% held via Venezio, Temasek has deemed interest in Nanofilm via another 0.335% in the form of shares managed by Fullerton Fund Management, as well as 0.055% managed by SeaTown.
On the same day SeaTown sold, another key Nanofilm shareholder, the Capital Group, sold nearly 3.14 million shares at $3.95 each. As such, it has cut its stake to 6.61% from 7.09%.
Besides holding a substantial stake in Nanofilm, Temasek is in a joint venture with the company to go after the hydrogen economy.
Nanofilm was the hottest IPO last year. From an IPO price of $2.59, it hit as high as $6.67 in July before crashing by more than a third following its 1HFY2021 earnings announcement which dropped 3.1% y-o-y instead of growing as expected.
Investors also don’t like the resignations of its COO and CEO within two months of each other, albeit for different reasons.
Shi Xu, the company’s founder and executive chairman, has taken on the interim CEO role.
At a briefing on Aug 18, he explained that the earnings drop was because of one-off costs incurred from getting its expanded capacity in Shanghai up to speed.
Also, revenue growth was not as high as expected because a key customer faced supply chain disruptions elsewhere which affected demand for Nanofilm’s coating services.
Between Aug 16 and Aug 19, the company spent around $20 million to buy back shares at prices ranging from $3.81 to $4.52.
Nanofilm shares recovered somewhat thus far this week. It closed at $4.41 on Aug 25, up from its recent low of $3.82 on Aug 17.
